Motivating Factors in Agile and Traditional Software Development Methods: A Comparative Study

We here present an investigation into how different software processes may influence software engineers' motivation. For that, we conducted a qualitative cases study comparing motivating factors for individuals who work with a prescriptive (traditional) process with the factors for individuals who work with an adaptive (agile) process. The analysis was based on Alderfer's ERG Theory. Our results show that there are differences in motivating factors, contributing to evidence that work processes do influence the motivation of software engineering practitioners.